There is no question that Barack Obama is one of the finest orators of our time. You hear his voice, and you want to believe. But belief is the enemy of reason, which is why Obama urged us all to renew our belief in the government.
In the main, Obama said an infinite deal of nothing and he said it very well. He hit all the hot-button topics and said what everyone wanted to hear. Taxes will go down. The deficit will go down. We will invest in future technology. We will freeze spending. On and on, Obama made promises which are, when one thinks about it, mutually exclusive. He cannot possibly keep them all. Based on his prior record, he won't even try for most of them.
Being ex-NASA, I was amused by Obama's Kennedy-esque attempt to revive the spirit of the race to the Moon, then hijack it into support for his green agenda. I am sorry Barack, but you are no John Kennedy, and substituting clean coal for oil as an energy supply does not capture the public imagination the way travel into space did all those years ago. Your expressed devotion to incubating new technologies mirrors what I have been saying for years. One would almost suspect your speech writers read this site. And if actions matched words I would celebrate the rebirth of the great adventure.
But you are, after all, the President that canceled the replacement space shuttle and ended the return to the Moon. If we are to have a "Sputnik moment" it can only happen by hitching rides on other nations' rockets. America's competency in space has failed as badly as its competency in high finance. Challenger and Columbia are but firecrackers compared to the Hindenburg like conflagration of Wall Street's mortgage-backed securities fraud.
Many pundits alluded to the fact that tonight's speech kicks off Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. I agree. Obama has made a lot of promises of what he plans to do tonight, and I will hold each and every failure to deliver up to public ridicule between now and November 4th, 2012. You talked the talk, Obama. You will be a one-term President if you fail to walk the walk.
Families will see their disposable income eaten up as they “pay the inevitable price” for the financial crisis, Mervyn King warned. With wages failing to keep pace with rising inflation, workers’ take- home pay will end the year worth the same as in 2005 — the most prolonged fall in living standards for more than 80 years, he claimed.
Mr King issued the warning in a speech in Newcastle upon Tyne after official figures showed that gross domestic product fell by 0.5 per cent during the final three months last year. The Government blamed the unexpected reduction — the first since the third quarter of 2009 — on the freezing weather that paralysed much of the country last month.
Landlords and tenants should be wary because rental scams are on the rise as criminals move in to take advantage of the volatile housing market.
Many people never consider how easy it is to take advantage of someone looking for a property to rent. Few give it a second thought. Fewer still take the steps necessary to ensure the person they're renting to or from isn't a criminal until it's too late. Avoiding rental scams begins with understanding how they work. Once you know what to look for, your chances of identifying one before you hand over your money increase enormously.
UPDATE : After exposing a rental scam that left a family of ten scrambling to find a new home KOB Eyewitness News 4 has learned of several others tricked into renting foreclosed homes.
Jacob Blom and his two roommates say they were blind-sided by a letter they received in the mail regarding the home they had been renting for two months now.
"This house has been foreclosed on, so I contacted a lady from the bank and she told me that the guy that we've been paying rent to is not the guy who owns the house," said Blom.
Blom is one of several victims throughout the U.S. who’ve fallen pretty to this cunning scam which tricks renters into renting foreclosed homes. Evidently this is a nationwide scam and a lot of desperate people are falling for it.
Bank of America’s Countrywide mortgage operation was accused of “massive fraud” in a suit by big investors who say they were misled about the quality of mortgage-backed securities. A dozen institutional investors, including TIAA-CREF Life Insurance Co. and New York Life Insurance Co., filed the complaint Jan. 24 in New York State Supreme Court, according to Bloomberg News....
And if they do, it will prove that the United Nations is as subverted by Israel as the US, which means it has lost all credibility as the forerunner of a global government. If the UN cannot stand up to one little nation they have no business presuming they can run an entire planet!
The praise came after an Israeli investigation panel declared Tel Aviv's military attack on the Freedom Flotilla as "legal" under international law, Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported.
The panel also claimed that the Israeli soldiers who took part in the killing of the nine activists acted in self-defense.
Webmaster's Commentary: Crowley was just as predictable as Pavlov's dog on this one, regurgitating just what Israel wanted to say, and right on cue.
Well, Mr. Crowley, I have a fact about the Israeli raid which I am sure you would like to forget. One of those killed in cold blood was an American kid, Furkan Dogan. Oh, yes, this kid was absolutely armed....with a camera, to record what was being done. http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Media/american-killed-gaza-aid-flotilla/story?id=10814848
Take a good, hard look at this photo, Mr. Crowley: can you possibly, if you have not had your conscience surgically removed, say with a straight fact that this kid was '...a "terrorist" who deserved what he got:five bullets delivered execution style for wanting to bring desperately needed supplies to the people of Gaza? Where, sir, is the immorality in that?!?
Oh, I forgot: you actually work at the West Wing of Israeli's Tel Aviv government, located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and whatever Israel wants you to say, and however Israel wants you to lie, you do it, and you will do it with absolutely no moral qualms.
And that, sir, is what makes me physically ill about this statement regarding the flotilla attack
Now, just for a moment imagine that instead of declaring immediate war on those who attacked Americans, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had rushed over to the League of Nations to explain why Japan's attack on Americans was really no big deal, and that Japan had good reason to attack and kill Americans! Imagine if Roosevelt, instead of the "Day of Infamy" speech, had made countless excuses why Japan was perfectly right to attack and kill Americans. Imagine that the US Congress, instead of voting war against the nation that attacked Americans decided to punish those who criticized the nation that attacked Americans?
Quite an amazing fantasy isn't it? Yet this is exactly what we have seen the present government do over the last few months ever since Israel's attack on the aid flotilla!
Webmaster's Commentary:
Relinked in response to reports US Government bows to Israel and accepts their version of the flotilla attack.
China is putting Urumqi, where deadly ethnic violence broke out in 2009, under full surveillance, with tens of thousands of cameras positioned across sensitive areas of the city, state media reported today.
Security has been tight in the western city since tensions between the area's largely Muslim Uighurs and members of China's Han majority flared into open violence in 2009. Uighurs have long resented what they see as an incursion by Han migrants into their ancestral homeland, the Xinjiang region.
Webmaster's Commentary:
If tensions recur, the first thing the Uighur resistance will do is find a way to take out those cameras.
The son of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Gamal Mubarak, has reportedly fled Egypt for the UK with his family. Unconfirmed reports out of Cairo say the younger Mubarak boarded a private jet bound for London with his family and nearly one hundred pieces of luggage. His departure, if confirmed, comes after a day of unprecedented mass protests in the streets of Cairo and other cities throughout Egypt.
At least four people died after an Arctic ice blast gripped large swathes of the eastern U.S. and sent temperatures plunging as low as a record -50F (-45C).
Webmaster's Commentary: GLOBAL WARMING, MY ASTROLABE!!
Take a good, hard look at these pictures with your own horse-sense; this is not what "global warming" looks like, nor is this caused by "global warming"!
A 57-year-old Palestinian woman with a pacemaker died over the weekend, after passing through the scanning machine at the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt. The woman, Fatima Mahmoud Abu Obeid, crossed over to Egypt along with her husband, and about half an hour later suddenly collapsed. She was taken by ambulance to a Rafah hospital on the Egyptian side where she was pronounced dead.
Palestinian sources blamed her death on the border scanning machine, described as a "U.S.-made advanced portal using millimeter wave holographic technology to screen passengers for weapons and explosives."
Jonathan Cook views some of the key revelations to emerge from the leaked confidential documents recording major, unreciprocated concessions made by Mahmoud Abbas's team in talks with Israel, including relinquishing Palestinian sovereignty over Muslim holy places, selling out the Palestinian refugees' fundamental rights and betraying Israel's Arab citizens - all in return for nothing!
Maureen Murphy explains why she prefers to risk imprisonment than testify before a grand jury in Chicago, USA, insisting that she will not be forced to account to the government for exercising her constitutionally protected freedoms of speech and association.
Lowe’s Cos., the second-biggest U.S. home-improvement retailer, plans to eliminate 1,700 middle- management jobs in stores as profit growth trails that of larger Home Depot Inc.
Brent Kirby, Lowe’s senior vice president of store operations for the North Central division, declined to say how much the moves will save the company. Lowe’s also plans to add 8,000 to 10,000 weekend sales positions to improve staffing at the chain’s busiest time of the week, he said in an interview. The change takes effect Jan. 29.
Since the start of the Credit Crunch in Sept. 2008, a fierce debate has raged over whether we will face deflation or inflation. We can now conclude we will have a toxic combination of both, known as stagflation...
The United States on Tuesday demanded the sacking of a UN human rights expert for "noxious" comments claiming there had been a US cover-up over the September 11 attacks.
Authorities are worried a recent wave of police officer shootings may not be a coincidence. In just 24 hours, at least 11 cops were shot around the country...
So less than half of U.S. residents have full time jobs, while the official jobless rate is 9.4%. Something's missing somewhere.
Includes 2 charts and 2 unemployment cartoons and a link to John Williams's website, Shadow Government Stats, showing the updated REAL unemployment rate for January...
One hint - It sure as hell is NOT the reported 9.4 %...
The chief executive of the privately-held Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, or MERS, is planning to leave the company and an announcement could come within days, according to people familiar with the matter...
Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we'd beat them to the moon. The science wasn't there yet. NASA didn't even exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.
This is our generation's Sputnik moment. Webmaster's Commentary:
This from the President who canceled the replacement shuttle and the return to the Moon!
Shortly after it lifted off in February 2009, NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Antarctica. With that, a $250 million investment became scrap metal on the ocean floor and an effort to begin using satellites to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide and trace emission-reduction actions was dealt a huge setback.
The OCO was “the only satellite in the world that will do the kind of global collection we need,” said James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and one of the authors of a 2010 report on satellite monitoring of climate change. “And we haven’t thought about how to replace it.”
The existing food system fails half the people on the planet, and needs radical change if world is to feed itself, report warns
Damian Carrington and John Vidal Guardian
The world will not be able to feed itself without destroying the planet unless a transformation on the scale of the industrial revolution takes place, a major government report has concluded.
The talkbacks are almost entirely negative towards Gray, with many urging her to cancel her show for daring to criticize Israel, while others call her a “nigger” and denigrate black music as “contaminated.” Gray might be vaguely aware of Israel’s systematic abuse of Palestinians, but is she aware of the racism towards black Africans inside Israel, including Ethiopian Jews?
Defense Secretary Robert Gates just proposed cutting the military and security budget by $78 billion over five years — perhaps only a downpayment on coming further reductions. Secretary Gates’s list of proposed cuts includes high-profile projects and weapons. But he does not mention the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, an exemplar of undisciplined spending in the name of defense.
The NGA has current touches, possessing a marketing slogan — “Know the Earth, Show the Way” — calling the Defense Department and CIA bureaus that receive its work product “customers” or “partners,” and posting photos of staff receptions on Flickr. But what the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency does for the most is part classified. About all the agency will say is that it supplies “geospatial intelligence support for global world events” and “can create highly accurate terrain visualization,” phrases that don’t explain much.
This is what the NGA does: take detailed aerial pictures of the Earth’s surface — mainly of cities, including America cities — then overlay them with other forms of data, such as maps of streets and power lines. Think there are drone aircraft only in the skies of Afghanistan and Pakistan? Drone aircraft controlled by the NGA have been crisscrossing the skies of the United States for several years, photographing minute details of roads, houses and campuses. Supposedly this is a counter-terrorism measure: good luck explaining how extremely detailed images of individual homes will deter terrorists. If you were sunbathing nude when an NGA drone passed above your backyard, agency files contain a photo you’ll hope not to see on Flickr.
No comments:
Post a Comment